Wood flooring are a popular choice in both residential and commercial properties. If you are considering fitting wood as the basis for your floor, be it DIY style or having it professionally fitted, you are sure to come across various prices. A question that often comes up is why some wood flooring are more expensive than others?

To understand wood flooring prices, you have to first understand the various options there are from wood species to grade of wood and construction technology as these and other factors will influence the price.

Construction type – There are two types of wood flooring, solid aka ‘real wood flooring’ and engineered aka ‘semi-solid wood flooring’. Solid wood flooring is made from 100% natural wood, while engineered wood flooring are made from natural wood but together with three or four levels of syntactic materials such as MDF, Plywood and even Softwood. While the two types look precisely the same when fitted, they vary in price. Because solid wood flooring contains 100% hardwood, it is more expensive than engineered wood flooring. Each of the two types has its far share of strengths and weaknesses. If your property suits solid wood flooring over engineered, you are likely to pay more.

Grade type – Both types of construction that were featured above contain hardwood, only at different volume. The grade of the wood refers to the visual aspect of how refine the wood is and what sort of color variation you should expect between the boards. The more refine the wood is, the less knots and color variations between the boards are to be expected. In turn, the more refine the wood is, the higher the grade will be. There are four grades and these are prime, select, natural and finally rustic or country grade. Prime is the highest grade and of course it will be reflected in the price, whereas rustic grade is the most
affordable grade.

Wood species – The tree species from which the wood is sourced will also impact the price. The more exotic the species is, the more it will likely to cost. To keep costs down, Oak or Walnut flooring should be considered as the offer great value for more and extensive durability.

So next time when you compare wood flooring prices, take a closer look at the type of construction, grade and species